Question

The Environmental Protection Department (EDP) of Hong Kong Government would like to promote consumer conservation behaviors in the local catering industry. You are asked to conduct a marketing research to inform the EDP on the possible strategies it can adopt to reduce the use of plastic straws among consumers.

a) Suggest TWO appropriate types of research design that the EDP may employ. Justify your answers.

b) You are asked to design a questionnaire for assessing consumers’ willingness to reduce the use of plastic straws. Please propose THREE possible independent variables that may predict the dependent variable (i.e., willingness to reduce the use of plastic straws). For EACH independent variable, explain why you think it can influence the dependent variable, and write a measurement scale to measure it.

c) Propose THREE solutions to increase the generalizability of the findings of your proposed research. Explain each solution in detail.

d) Illustrate with THREE examples how an ethical researcher could exercise good practices in collecting data from respondents.

Answer 1

a) Research design: The set of techniques used to conduct the research can be referred as research design.

A perfect understanding of the problem is the most essential part on picking up the best suitable research design.

The appropriate research designs EDP may employ are as follows.

1. Descriptive design : Descriptive design is the model which gives the information about the present conditions/ behaviours of the customers.

Justification:The main motive of research design is to help the EDP on possible strategies to reduce the usage of plastic starws. Hence it is very important to know the basic data of the customers who are using, when they are using and where they are using.

2. Observational design: Observational design mainly focus on the particular attribute of the customers.

Justification:In this case, the main focus is on one customer's behaviour that is to reduce the plastic straws consumption. Hence observation design helps to identify the complete information about that particular behaviour.

b) To design a questionnaire the following independent factors can be taken into consideration:

1. Quantity: It is important to know how many plastic straws people use per month to estimate the average plastic usage per customer

Scale- the average number of plastic straws which you use per month.

A- more than 100, B- 51-100,C- 20-50 , D- less than 20

2. Location: Understanding the places where usage is more will help to mitigate the use particularly in those places.

What are the places the customers actually uses more number of plastic straws.

A- Restaurant B- Home C-College/ Office campus D- Others(please specify)

3. Occasion: The percentage of people who uses most plastic straws should help us to concentrate on the necessity.

How often do think it is necessary to use plastic straws.

A- Always B- sometimes C- Rare D- Never

3. Solutions to increase the generaliability of research:

• Descriptive design: Data can be made more reliable by including diverse population.
• By selecting less time frame helps to speed up the process of research.
• By constructing definitive questionnaire will help to collect the accurate data.
• Observational design
• By including different age group people in sampling
• Behaviours may change time to time in observational design hence sampling collection should be done in different time frames.
• The data collection should be more relevant to the current situation

D. Ethical researchers exercise good practice by observing the following.

1. Should not be biased in choosing the sampling population who belong to particular area/ community which will not solve the actual problem.

2. Should not form pre notions because pre notions influence the questionnaire and will not give accurate results.

3. Credibility of sampling: The sampling has to be conducted in real time environment instead of using the old research done by others.

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